Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  “A most pleasurable meeting,” concluded Nixon, and shifted his weight, a signal doubtless to Hunt, who now steered him down the hall to the Ambassador’s office. I wish you could have seen the Vice President, Kittredge. Nixon’s an ordinary man in appearance, yet he’s not. He must be as completely the instrument of his own will as Hugh Montague. Can you conceive of two people, however, who are more unalike?

  Hunt now comes back to say to us, “Gang, you have just met the next President of the United States.”

  I wonder if Howard is considering a resignation from the Agency in order to work for Nixon in 1960. He’s growing dissatisfied these days, and the cause is our new Ambassador, a nicely tailored specimen named Robert Woodward whom Hunt was complaining about before Woodward even reached the Embassy. “Another eminent nonentity,” was Howard’s initial description. “The man’s ambassadorial credentials consist of a stint in Costa Rica.”

  Woodward, however, proved no nugatory presence. He ties into a State Department bloc who are flat-out opposed to the Agency, and one of his first questions to Hunt was, “What mischief are you fomenting down here?”

  “I,” Howard informed us, “replied to him, ‘My mandate does not extend to overthrowing a friendly government, sir.’”

  Woodward then gave a lecture which Howard will be dining out on for years. “‘Mr. Hunt, please recognize,’” goes Howard’s imitation, “‘that this country of Uruguay, while small in size, is the finest democracy extant in South America. There are few nations which can lay claim to being as well run, as clean of corruption, and so much of a model to less fortunate small nations. Uruguay is the Switzerland of South America.’” Howard repeats all this for Gatsby and Kearns, Porringer, Waterston, and myself, then repeats, “clean of corruption! Why, these welfare-state crooks in the Legislative Assembly can purchase a new foreign car every year free of duty. What is that worth when they sell it? Ten thousand extra frogskins?”

  He’s right, of course. Uruguay is corrupt. The liberals steal and so does the right. Don Jaime Saavedra Carbajal, for example, is not above herding thousands of his cattle over the Jaguar River into Brazil as a means of saving untold customs duty. In a word, smuggling. The border police certainly have to be bought off. Howard doesn’t disapprove, however. It reminds him, he says, of how the first great Texas fortunes were built. I don’t see how this alters the judgment, but then, it’s not the day to argue with Howard. The real problem is that Station no longer has its way with State. While we never mingled all that much with their personnel, we could always cater to our vanity by trotting over to any of the offices in the Embassy; the boys there, whether thirty years old or sixty, were properly resentful of the warm welcome we receive from the State Department ladies.

  Now we’ve become the greaser gang. State Department personnel are beginning to act hollow and overfriendly, as if they are our social superiors but don’t want us to know it because greasers do wreck property. Two weeks ago Hunt was notified that Woodward and his new deputy will attend all the foreign embassy functions; Hunt can, in effect, take a well-deserved rest in the evening and enjoy his family. Needless to say, this removes us from the foreign embassy circuit, a blessing—I’ll be able to read a book—but social ostracism does have its bite even if you don’t mind what you are being cut out of. Hunt is, of course, inwardly livid.

  Final note. There is, actually, more going on than I admit to. Over the last month we’ve managed to set up a love nest for Zenia Masarov and Georgi Varkhov, an operation that—how could it be otherwise?—involved numerous steps. Apart from managing to bait the trap, technicians had to fly down from Washington to install the audio and test the bugs, the best of which is emplaced in no less of a salient than one of the posts of a four-poster bed.

  I have to admit that we at the Station may be showing a certain prurient anticipation. In ten days, we’ll see if it works. I could let you know earlier, but will accept your strictures for what they are. July 1 will have to prove soon enough.

  Yours,

  Harry

  33

  July 1, 1958

  Dear Kittredge,

  Zenia and Georgi turned out to be having a passionate affair. I’m amazed at how much I am feeling for Brishka, and, believe me, she now speaks of him often. One is almost inclined to say, “Poor Varkhov!” for he has to hear constantly about the husband whose wife he is presumably despoiling—Zenia is voluble concerning her sense of shame. Naturally, Porringer will make a point of saying, “No woman ever got injured by a good fuck,” a bracing piece of information, and wouldn’t it be nice if it were true?

  Meanwhile, I have been given the monitor’s role in AV/ RATHOLE, which is the unbemused name Hunt has bestowed on our eavesdropping operation. I don’t know if I’m dealing with a comedy or a monstrosity. Can humans be held accountable for what they say in the midst of the act?

  The mechanics often prove droll. While the audio promises to be the best yet devised for this kind of tap, and we are able to receive conversations from the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, and the bedroom, there are gaps when Zenia or Georgi rattles a plate, or, worse, the bedsprings take over. The Finnish Micks go over after every visit to pick up the tapes from a bedroom we’ve rented on the floor above, and come back to their desk in our office to spend hours translating. Then, I try to put it into better English without losing any hard intelligence. Since the Sourballs also receive the raw Russian transcripts a day later in Washington and can decide for themselves what is truly of value, I begin to wonder if I am needed. I take this thought to Hunt who assures me that my little unhappiness is but a cavil. “Just keep up your output,” he tells me. I have a hunch he is sending copies of my stuff to a couple of his primes in Western Division.

  The worst of it is that the boil-down is minimal. Varkhov goes to his love-nest to forget about his office, and Zenia meets him because she is “captive of exotic alien obsession.” We hear a great deal about that. Varkhov comes through in the tapes as even cruder human stuff than anticipated—apparently, he is descended from a long line of serfs, and his father rose to be a railroad engineer, that is, a locomotive driver, while he, Georgi, distinguished himself as a young if all but uneducated platoon Commissar, survived Stalingrad, and was some sort of hit man or executioner for the GRU during the Red Army’s advance to Berlin. He’s a butcher boy according to Zenia’s wrought description—he deals in “flesh, bones, and now you deal with me.” She speaks mournfully and often about her inability to be in control of herself. “I read books concerning collapse of virtue in women, but books do not warn sufficiently. Not Flaubert. Not even Tolstoy. Chekhov maybe. A little. Not enough. Dostoyevsky, the worst. No good for understanding sufferings of spoiled women mired in worship of devil’s flesh.”

  “Who is a devil?” Georgi protests. “I am one man under impossible circumstances. I worship your husband for his wisdom.”

  “Not so much as you worship center of me, my pussy hair. Liking what your nose finds? Brishka adores such. You no. Too scared. Strong man scared. Center of sin in pussy hair.”

  I’m sorry, Kittredge, but after the Finnish Micks do their literal translation, I am hard put to get it back into enough English to give an idea of what Zenia and Georgi sound like. That last in raw translation came to me as “turpitude in crotch hairs, stinking crotch hairs.” Don’t look to Russians for the delicate touch.

  She upbraids Varkhov for quite a time as “nyet kulturny.” I am generally familiar with the expression via Masarov, but Gohogon, another of the Finnish Micks, assures me that this is a forceful insult among Russians—either you are a cultured person, or you are without culture. Zenia Arkadyova feels degraded exactly because she is full of passion for this nyet kulturny, Varkhov. “I had five aunts, all ladies, all dead. Would faint with one look at you.”

  His replies to such remarks usually have to be inserted in the transcript as: VARKHOV: . . . (grunts).

  I become sufficiently curious to get Gohogon to let me listen t
o the raw tape. Another element reveals itself. Zenia’s words may be brutal, but her voice is soft, melodious, welcoming. His responding grunt is one of pure happiness, something like a hippo snorting in muck. Khorosho, he replies, which comes out much like a grunt itself when uttered in a hoarse voice. “Horror-show,” is the nearest aural equivalent. In fact, khorosho means okay, pure and simple okay.

  “I disgrace my family,” says Zenia.

  “Khorosho.”

  “You are a dog.”

  “Khorosho.”

  “You are a pig.”

  “Khorosho.”

  “Specimen of greed.”

  “Khorosho, khorosho.”

  I begin to think of Peones. Is there a principle here? Do brutes look to be whipped? Is there a scale of inner justice?

  “Tell me more,” he says. “Am here to listen.”

  “Are unworthy.”

  “Okay.”

  “Unworthy of my husband.”

  “Understood.”

  “You revolt me.”

  “I don’t,” said Varkhov.

  “No, you don’t. Come here. I need you.”

  Groans, heavy breathing, bedsprings. Maniacal cries at the end. (Yes, I do listen to the raw tape.) You cannot always tell which voice is which. “Fuck me, fuck me out of my heart. You are my liberty, my shit,” cries Zenia Arkadyova, yes, it is her voice, and even on the tape I can feel her reaching from the hole in the center of herself to that place in the universe where perhaps there is something other than a hole. I don’t know whether to be moved or appalled. Listening to the tape, I can feel the sweet nausea of her desire and wonder if I have pinched some unnatural nerve in myself.

  Hunt visits my desk from time to time with exhortations to extract the nitty-gritty. “Restrict it to the gamy stuff. I want to spear Boris in the pits. None of that fraudulent muck about ‘how wonderful my husband is.’ Hell, Harry, human perversity being what it is, a man can forgive a wife who keeps talking about him while she’s with the other guy. So, just look for the give-it-to-me-you-goddamn-great-fucker stuff. The good passages. We’ll squash the heart right out of Brishka, that poor, misunderstood KGB mass-murdering bastard.”

  So I commence editing. A fearsome product results. Another example, be it said, of the validity of K. Gardiner Montague’s thesis on A and O. If I allowed myself, I’d be in a whirl of disturbed feelings about what I’m doing, but Alpha has taken over, Alpha appears to thrive on the excitement of bringing off a good job with obdurate, even repellent, material. Not that this is entirely repellent. Kittredge, in honesty, I am not unmoved by the depth of Zenia’s voice. Can you imagine me ever admitting this to anyone but you? Yet our good Reverend Hubbard has to confess that even Varkhov’s grunts, listened to long enough, do strike human chords: tenderness in the midst of animal greed, sorrow in the heart of all his harsh curses. He comes—all right, I will tell all—shouting, “Whore, mother-of-pigs, filth I fuck,” incredible, awful stuff which evokes an aria of responsive ecstasies from her. If I allowed myself, I could feel diminished by the power of their carnality. But I have my Alpha, good, determined work-soldier, and he runs the operation. It even becomes tedious piecing through the transcripts for “good passages.” With the aid of Gohogon, I find the equivalent bits on the tape and splice them. Then I listen as if it were music. Of course, the cuts don’t always work. Whereupon I have to play the raw tapes and try to find other moments of Russian sound that could bridge the transition. Since I don’t know the language, my choices often make no great sense word for word, but miss by miss and bit by bit, I do patch together a workable, even overwhelming, actualization on edited tape of what Hunt was looking for. If he’s been complaining every day at how long it takes, he is generous enough, old clam-lipped Howard, to express his praise finally at my good job. And I am pleased. Deep inside of Omega, hopelessly incarcerated, a subparticle of my soul is mourning for Brishka, but Alpha has carried the day. Indeed, the week. I feel like a sound editor and/or radio director. I have created an interesting vocal work. I swear, before the power of a tough job well done, moral qualms have no more force than blades of grass before a lawnmower. Or, so it seems while working.

  Now, of course, the question arises of what to do with the finished product. Hunt, predictably, is all for blasting Boris Masarov out of his socks. Send him the tape, and then no matter what happens we can count on a sizable profit. At the least, if he decides to swallow it, he and Varkhov will have to work together. More likely, Masarov will attempt to have Varkhov sent back to Moscow, or will apply for return himself. That will be time-consuming for the Soviet team.

  Of course, there is always the larger possibility that Varkhov can be blackmailed into working for us. Ditto Masarov. Could this tape so demoralize him about the value of his present life that he would consider defection?

  Hunt argues sensibly that Boris is likely to look upon us as even more of an enemy than before. Hjalmar Omaley, who has flown in from Soviet Russia Division again, is, of course, all on the side of working for a defection. The Sourballs are geared for that. Arguments go on between Omaley and Hunt that must reflect the scene at Headquarters between Western Hemisphere Division cum Groogs on one side, Soviet Russia Division on the other. I won’t consume pages of this letter by listing any more of the debates, scenarios, lacunae, and, via Omaley, paranoid accusations. Hjalmar is seeing Nancy Waterston every night, and Hunt no longer knows whether to trust her. Un tour de drôle.

  In the middle of all this, arrives the following cable. Decoded, it reads:

  TO: AV/HACENDADO

  FROM: KU/GHOUL-1

  CONGRATULATIONS ON RATHOLE. SPLENDID DEMOPO. FELICITATIONS.

  Demopo, Kittredge, stands for Demolition Options, that is, wreaking havoc on your opposition.

  Hunt was in heaven. “This is the first recognition from your guy since he invited me to dinner two years ago.” He hawked his throat. “On second thought, Harry, you know how to read the man. What is Harlot up to? Does he want to come in on this?”

  “He would never approach you directly if he wanted to take it over,” I venture. It’s amazing, Kittredge, how one becomes an expert. I, who have never understood Hugh for one moment, am now explaining him to others.

  “Well, what is he saying?” asked Hunt.

  “He’s offering genuine felicitations, I believe. After all, it is a nice operation.”

  “Hell and soda water if it isn’t,” Hunt exclaims. He can’t quite trust me when it comes to Hugh Montague, but on the other hand, I am saying what he wants to hear. So he tends to believe me. Then shakes his head. “There’s got to be more to this cable.”

  “Why,” I asked, “don’t you give him a ring?”

  He sighed. I think he was a little reluctant. “This one calls for the red phone,” he said at last.

  I left Howard’s office. In fifteen minutes, I was summoned back. He was in a glow. “Montague’s not all that bad when he chooses to be forthcoming. Wants to speak to you now. Wants to congratulate you, too.”

  When I got on the secure phone, however, count on it, Howard was still hovering in his office. So I did not dare to close the door. Your own dear mate greeted me by saying in that oft-familiar tunnel voice, “Declare loudly how glad you are that I like it.”

  “Yessir,” I said, “I’m awfully glad that you like it.”

  “All right,” said Hugh, “enough of that. The cable was merely preamble to get you on the secure phone. I’m not keening in on RATHOLE. Its promise is small. Masarov and Varkhov are made of the hard stuff. They will never defect. In any event, it’s not my playground. I’m calling with a query for you. How would you like to be transferred to Israel?”

  “You don’t mean it? Isn’t that a plum?”

  “Take it more slowly. It’s very much Angleton’s show over there. As my representative, you’d be working uphill. However, I do hold a couple of slots. Not every last soul in the Mossad is enamored of Mother. A couple of top-shelf Israelis are more inclined to work wi
th me.”

  “I guess I had better think about this.”

  “You had better. On the positive side, the Mossad are the diamonds in the intelligence game.”

  “Yessir.”

  “You will come out a master, or broken.”

  “Broken?”

  “Crushed.” He paused. When I did not reply, he went on. “No question. It’s Angleton’s fief. You will be the enemy as far as Jesus is concerned.” He pronounced Jesus as Hey-sooz, James Jesus Angleton.

  “Why are you proposing I go, then?” Unfortunately, I had to whisper this for fear Howard would hear me.

  “Because you may survive. Jesus does not hold all the cards. I’ve marked a few for myself.”

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Do. You’re at a fork. Brood.”

  “How do we pick this up again?”

  “Call Rosen. He’s now my slave Friday. Telephone him at TSS-Tertiary on one of your open lines. Chat away. Harmless buddy-buddy stuff. If you’ve decided that Israel is go, you need merely remark, ‘How I miss Maine now that I’m in Montevideo.’ I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “And if one decides in the negative?”

  “Then, boy, don’t use the code. Rosen will have nothing to report to me.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Two days to determine your mind.” He hung up before I could ask about you, Kittredge. Not that he would have told me.

  I will not try to describe the next forty-eight hours. I felt exalted; I dwelt in terror. Angleton’s reputation is easily as fearsome as your husband’s, but then it is to Hugh’s and Angleton’s honor that Agency people speak of them as legends without ever quite knowing what they do.

  I was able to learn two things about myself in the next two days. Dear Married Lady: I entered the abyss of my cowardice and smelled the noxious fumes therein; I climbed the highest peaks of my hitherto unglimpsed high ambition. I even thought of the moment I got back into the polo game. I ended by telephoning Arnie Rosen at TSS on an open Station phone, resolved to speak of my longing for Maine.